A year ago, if someone told you the Nairobi Securities Exchange would close 2025 with one of its strongest rallies since the mid-1990s, you’d probably have laughed. Yet here you are, scrolling through the same phone you use for mobile payments, BizBet officiel sports betting, and morning news, while the NSE All Share Index quietly hit an all-time record of 202.73 points in early February 2026.
That number puts the total market capitalization at KSh 3.199 trillion. Safaricom shares climbed over 65% in a single stretch. And since early 2026, that device in your pocket can also make you a shareholder.
The 2025 Rally Nobody Expected
Let’s put numbers on the table. The NSE 20 Share Index surged 56.1% through 2025, climbing from post-crisis lows to close at 3,139.2 points by December. The benchmark NASI rose 51.1% to 186.6 points. Both the NSE 25 and NSE 10 posted gains north of 49%.
What drove it? Three things collided at once.
First, macroeconomic conditions improved faster than most analysts predicted. GDP growth projections settled between 4.9% and 5.3% for 2026, inflation fell within the Central Bank’s target band of 5.0% ± 2.5%, and the shilling held firm against the dollar.
Second, equity trading activity jumped 37.3%, from KES 105 billion in 2024 to KES 145 billion. Derivatives contracts followed, climbing from KES 170 million to KES 257 million.
Third, and this catches people off guard, domestic investors carried the rally. Foreign participation dropped to about 24.6% of turnover by early February 2026. Local buyers absorbed most of the selling pressure, flipping the usual narrative that East African exchanges rely on foreign portfolio flows to sustain momentum. By Week 6 of 2026, the banking index had climbed to 218.51, driven by heavy activity in Equity Group, KCB, and Stanbic. Safaricom declared an interim dividend of KSh 0.85 per share, reinforcing cash strength at the top of the market.
Individual stocks told wildly different stories depending on which side you picked:
- Uchumi Supermarket gained 505.9%
- Sameer Africa rose 486.4%
- Umeme fell 53.3%
- Williamson Tea dropped 34%
Pick the wrong side and your year looked nothing like the index suggested.
Ziidi Trader and Stock Trading Inside M-Pesa
On February 10, 2026, Safaricom officially launched Ziidi Trader, a mini-app embedded directly inside M-Pesa. You open the app, tap “Trade,” pick a listed company, set a price or accept the best available one, and confirm with your M-Pesa PIN. No brokerage account. No paperwork.
M-Pesa serves roughly 35 million active users. The NSE had about 1.5 million registered CDS accounts before this launch, with only around 61,000 trading actively. Now imagine even 2% of M-Pesa’s user base placing a single trade.
Since its pilot phase in late 2025, the platform has already accounted for approximately 40% of trades on the NSE, representing about 5% of daily trading volume. All of that from small retail investors buying one share at a time, with total transaction fees as low as KES 68.50 on a KES 4,500 purchase.
Safaricom partnered with Kestrel Capital to handle execution through an omnibus account structure. You keep your individual portfolio visible inside the app, but behind the scenes, Kestrel manages settlement under Capital Markets Authority oversight.
Ziidi Trader builds on the earlier success of the Ziidi Money Market Fund, launched in December 2024, which attracted 1.15 million customers by September 2025. That represented nearly 48% of all individual unit trust investors registered with the Capital Markets Authority. The progression from savings product to stock trading product happened in barely 14 months.
Your Money, Your Habits
The 2024 FinAccess Household Survey paints a complicated picture. Formal financial access reached 84.8%, up from 83.7% in 2021. Credit usage rose to 64%. But the share of savers declined to 68.1%, the first drop since 2009. Meanwhile, 16.6% of borrowers fully defaulted on their loans, up from 10.7% three years earlier.
Financial literacy sits at 42.1%. Fewer than half the adult population can correctly answer questions about inflation, interest rates, and risk diversification. And 9.9% of adults remain entirely excluded from formal financial services, with rural youth making up nearly half of that group. The government’s Financial Inclusion Fund (Hustler Fund) has seen rapid uptake, with 28% of the population borrowing from it, though usage skews toward urban, higher-income populations rather than the communities it was designed to reach.
For people looking to grow money without excessive risk, a few instruments still stand out:
- Money Market Funds yielding between 11% and 14% annually
- Treasury bills accessible through DhowCSD for as little as KES 100
- Infrastructure bonds with tax-free returns
- Sacco shares paying 10% to 18% annual dividends on deposits
Where Betting Fits Into the Mobile Finance Conversation
Alt Text: User holding smartphone with BizBet betting platform
Sports betting has grown into one of the most popular mobile categories across East Africa, and for good reason. The apps are fast, the onboarding is smooth, and the entertainment value is immediate. If you’ve ever searched for an apk download of a betting application, you already know how quickly you can go from installation to placing your first stake on a football match or a tennis set.
What makes this relevant to a stock market article is the infrastructure underneath. The same mobile payment rails, real-time data feeds, and instant sign-up flows that power betting apps also power Ziidi Trader and M-Pesa’s investment products. East Africa built some of the most advanced mobile finance infrastructure on the continent, and sports betting was one of the first industries to prove that millions of people would engage with financial products entirely through their phones. That early adoption helped normalize mobile transactions at a scale that made stock trading via M-Pesa a logical next step.
